Just had this thought go through my head today: it'd sure be nice if you could buy a portable music player (or have software on your computer, or a smartphone app) with an AI program that could take crappy-sounding MP3s, analyze the music data, make "smart" guesses about what sonic data is missing or distorted, and use those guesses to fill in the missing details in the music while you're playing the song!
The AI also could take monaural music files and "figure out" how to separate the sound into two stereo channels (or even 7.1 channels) in a way that sounds good, and play it back that way.
If you want, the program could also extract these modified "smartened" music files to your PC desktop, where you could save them as MP3s, FLACs, WAVs, or whatever, at your bitrate and sample rate of choice.
If these AIs become powerful enough further into the future, then eventually you could take a 384 kHz / 32-bit, 7.1-channel FLAC file, convert it all the way down to a telephone-quality MP3 at 16 kbps, 11 kHz, mono, and then play this bad MP3 using the AI program on your music player to make it sound >99% the same as the original FLAC file -- through all 7.1 channels!
Wouldn't that be something?
It gets even better. Play song recordings from the early 20th Century. Flapper music, swing music, whatever. If you have a nice sound system or good headphone system, then these songs will sound like you're witnessing the show live at a concert.
Play pop-song recordings from the early 21st Century with crushed dynamics and "loudness war" shenanigans, and they'll also have a live sound with amazing dynamic detail as well.
But, of course, this AI remastering wouldn't be limited to just music. How about movies, photographs, and even artwork?
You could play a black-and-white, 4:3-aspect-ratio movie from the 1930s, and it would look and feel as if it were filmed today with 4K-resolution video equipment, 32-bit color, 16:9 aspect ratio, and with highly-detailed 7.1-channel surround sound. (Or could even be made for a virtual reality (VR) headset.)
Old photos from the 1800s would appear as if they were taken today with a professional 20-megapixel digital camera. Famous historic artwork could be rendered to look like real photographs. And, of course, cartoons and animated films would look like they were filmed with live characters and real scenery.
I couldn't find much information online about this topic, but did manage to turn up this article about old films, photos, and drawings.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else here on Head-Fi has ever had these thoughts go through their mind. Every time I see or hear about a portable music player that costs a ridiculous $3,000, I've started thinking to myself, "Hmmm....Maybe it has one of those futuristic AI remastering apps that can make a telephone-quality MP3 sound like 7th heaven!"
Oh well,...it's common knowledge that you can take high-quality audio and video, and reduce it down through compression. But most people believe it's impossible to do the opposite.
In the future with AI technology, though, this "opposite" almost certainly will be possible. Can't wait!
How about you?
The AI also could take monaural music files and "figure out" how to separate the sound into two stereo channels (or even 7.1 channels) in a way that sounds good, and play it back that way.
If you want, the program could also extract these modified "smartened" music files to your PC desktop, where you could save them as MP3s, FLACs, WAVs, or whatever, at your bitrate and sample rate of choice.
If these AIs become powerful enough further into the future, then eventually you could take a 384 kHz / 32-bit, 7.1-channel FLAC file, convert it all the way down to a telephone-quality MP3 at 16 kbps, 11 kHz, mono, and then play this bad MP3 using the AI program on your music player to make it sound >99% the same as the original FLAC file -- through all 7.1 channels!
Wouldn't that be something?
It gets even better. Play song recordings from the early 20th Century. Flapper music, swing music, whatever. If you have a nice sound system or good headphone system, then these songs will sound like you're witnessing the show live at a concert.
Play pop-song recordings from the early 21st Century with crushed dynamics and "loudness war" shenanigans, and they'll also have a live sound with amazing dynamic detail as well.
But, of course, this AI remastering wouldn't be limited to just music. How about movies, photographs, and even artwork?
You could play a black-and-white, 4:3-aspect-ratio movie from the 1930s, and it would look and feel as if it were filmed today with 4K-resolution video equipment, 32-bit color, 16:9 aspect ratio, and with highly-detailed 7.1-channel surround sound. (Or could even be made for a virtual reality (VR) headset.)
Old photos from the 1800s would appear as if they were taken today with a professional 20-megapixel digital camera. Famous historic artwork could be rendered to look like real photographs. And, of course, cartoons and animated films would look like they were filmed with live characters and real scenery.
I couldn't find much information online about this topic, but did manage to turn up this article about old films, photos, and drawings.
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else here on Head-Fi has ever had these thoughts go through their mind. Every time I see or hear about a portable music player that costs a ridiculous $3,000, I've started thinking to myself, "Hmmm....Maybe it has one of those futuristic AI remastering apps that can make a telephone-quality MP3 sound like 7th heaven!"
Oh well,...it's common knowledge that you can take high-quality audio and video, and reduce it down through compression. But most people believe it's impossible to do the opposite.
In the future with AI technology, though, this "opposite" almost certainly will be possible. Can't wait!
How about you?
Last edited:
